


flames the color of your voice

by BeggarWhoRides



Series: vampire, interred [2]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: (a little), (of a sort), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, F/F, Flashbacks, Hallucinations, Historical Inaccuracy, Injury, Insanity, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, post-episode 35, pre-episode 36
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 20:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2705378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeggarWhoRides/pseuds/BeggarWhoRides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for episode 35. </p>
<p>Carmilla leapt into the chasm for Laura. Instead of dying, she falls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	flames the color of your voice

**Author's Note:**

> A sort of sequel/companion to "everything's burning (nothing's on fire)" but can stand mostly on its own. 
> 
> There are spoilers for episode 35 ahead.

At some point, she opens her eyes. 

She opens them and closes them and opens them (or she closes them and opens them and closes them) and nothing changes, it's black then black then black and something colder than ice settles in her stomach, crawls up her throat and fills her veins because _this feels familiar, so familiar, too familiar._

_Okay, _she tells herself, eyes roaming around her, and then she moved her eyelids before gazing around again. Maybe she'd had her eyes closed the first time around. _This is a dream again. This is a dream that happens every few months. This will pass._ There was only a faint wisp of blood in the air, iron and copper and...salted fish?__

_Not a normal dream, then. Not what she remembered._

_(She remembered every moment of those decades, could feel the memories whispering at the back of her mind every time the lights went out and it took even her eyes a few moments to adjust, every night she went out and there was no moon, every time she walked into a basement. Every time she stepped into those dark, enclosed spaces she could feel them shrinking around her, could feel blood rushing in and submerging her, covering her, choking her, drowning her while she was forced to keep existing, to keep going despite the fact that she did not want to, she did not want to, she did not want to)._

But a dream. 

It had to be a dream. 

Slowly, achingly, she closed her left hand, curled the fingers in until fingernails lightly scraped her palm. Her right hand twitched once, twice, and then _pain,_ sparking and blazing up through her shoulder, her back arching up off the ground and her teeth slamming into her lip out of some reflex to _not scream not scream not scream._

_Not a dream._

_Alone in the dark, alone in the ground, alone in the black, so dark and so black it's suffocating and swallowing, can't move, can't move, and oh god there's liquid, liquid running down from her eyes, down her face, blood was running into her mouth, a few drops preceding a flood, because soon it would fill up, and she'd be left again, it would happen again, because history repeats and more liquid was running down her face, it wasn't stopping, and she wasn't screaming because she wasn't mad the first time, she wasn't mad this time, she wasn't a madwoman she was dead, she was dead but not, she was dead and she wasn't and she wished she was._

\------------------------------- 

The fight came back in sputters and bursts, images of Laura with her back to her, Laura's feet so terribly close to the edge of a cavern, Mother screeching, her own arm clutching the hilt of a sword that wasn't a sword, but a blade-shaped hole in existence, her own arm blistering and hissing and _bubbling_ and _rotting,_ like a dead thing boiled, and the feeling like ten thousand knives, ten million daggers of ice, stabbing and carving her arm from the fingertip up, and not dropping the blade, not letting go because that would mean saving herself but losing Laura for good. 

She remembered seeing Ell, beautiful Ell, impossibly beautiful, shining impossibly bright, mouthing pleas and reaching--and for Laura, she'd turned away. 

She couldn't help huffing a bitter laugh at that--because really, she'd chosen Elle and had ended up in a coffin of blood, she'd turned away and now she was in a coffin of stone and she just could _not_ win. 

But she could do the right thing (she'd done the right thing, and that was something she knew in a place deeper than herself) and maybe the fact that she never won was for the best, because then the victories could go to the good people. 

\---------------------------------------------- 

_Twitch._

_Twitch._

_Twitch._

She decides her eyes are open and she's facing where the sky would be. Her mouth is full of dust and grit, and she names the particles after the stars she'd be seeing. _Regulus. Denebola. Phe. Alphard._ When she had enough, she started making constellations. _Leo. Leo minor. Phoenix. Hydra._

The stars are floating above her, and she knows they're hallucinations, but dammit she also knows she's dying for good and she's not going to die in a grave. 

She's going to die among stars. 

But her grip on them falters, just for a moment, and Ell is coming out of the stars, Ell shining and reaching, crying _please,_ crying _monster, I waited, I burned, they swallowed me whole and where were you monster, where were you demon, this was you and your fear, you and your failings,_ and all she can say is _I'm sorry._

_Twitch._

Her right hand moved and pain leaped up her arm, shoulder to finger to elbow to shoulder and the world went blank. Her right hand scraped against stone as the fire faded, and she closed or opened her eyes back to where the sky must be and started again. 

_Ridel. Saiph. Bellatrix. Alnilam. Mother shrieking, shadows reaching._

_Twitch._

_Pollux. Castor. Her arm twisting and withering and falling away at the fingertip, biting her lip so weakness wouldn't seep out._

_Twitch._

_Vega. Deneb. Albireo. Laura. Laura smiling, Laura laughing, Laura twirling as she led her in a waltz, Laura safe and whole and happy._

She left her right hand still and watched Laura spin among the stars. 

\---------------------------- 

_I'm scared,_ Laura tells her, nestled into her side, curled underneath her left arm. 

"Of what? The vampires? You don't need to be, I'll handle it. It's under control, creampuff." 

_It's not that._ Laura moved closer, looking up through her eyelashes. _I'm scared because you're scared._

"I'm not." 

_Of course you are. You're dying._

"I..." She closed her eyes and opened them (or maybe opened them and closed them?) and Laura's image didn't waver. Laura's head felt too light on her chest, Laura's hair kept shifting in a wind she couldn't feel. "You're not real." 

_No._

"I'm not mad," she tells Laura-not-Laura, because she's not, not ever but especially not now, because this wasn't and wouldn't ever be a forever, because there was no blood in this coffin and that meant there was an end to this, a very soon end. "And I'm not scared." 

_Countess Mircalla's scared._

"Countess Mircalla was a sniveling, dribbling child of a girl--" 

_And she was you, once upon a time. You don't need to hate her._

And she knows that, knows that Countess Mircalla was just a child, little Mir, who'd assumed that a ball for her 18th birthday would be safe, would be happy, and then found herself going outside because someone was calling for help, found herself in the snow, jewels gone, her blood leaving her through a ragged hole in her stomach, hurting and cold and so afraid because she hadn't gone to confession, had eaten a bit of pork during Lent last Friday, had impure thoughts about ladies that she'd never confessed to and she didn't want to go to Hell, didn't want to burn, she begged in her mind _please please please don't let me burn_ and a beautiful woman had appeared and asked _do you want to live?_ and Mircalla had sobbed and said _yes._

She'd burned anyway, lifetimes later, inside her mind inside a coffin of blood. 

"I wasn't meant to have time to be scared," she says, and it's not what she meant to say but it will do. "It was meant to be over. I was meant to be over." But the light had been weaker than they'd thought, and she'd dropped the sword as she'd fallen, and she hadn't been crushed, and she'd meant to be and now she was stuck. 

_It'll be over soon,_ dream-Laura says as they look at the galaxy she made up in her head and it's blessing and damnation all in one. 

\------------------------------- 

_I'm scared_ Laura says and she is too, she thinks she says so but she doesn't know anymore and the stars are getting harder to keep in place, they keep sliding away from her and she doesn't want them to, she wants them to stay so she won't be in the dark, she hates the dark, she wants them to stay, she wants Laura to be safe but she wants Laura to stay. 

_I'm not real,_ Laura says and that's right, Laura is safe, Laura is in the light, but Laura is also her next to her and there's reasons, there's an explanation but it's harder to hold onto than the stars are so she lets it go. 

_I'm scared_ Laura says and so is she, she is and she's not sure why anymore but something is losing, something is going away forever and it's an important something but she doesn't know what it is, she's just scared and she doesn't want Laura to go, and Laura says _I'll stay as long as you do_ which doesn't make sense because is she going anywhere? but it means Laura will stay. 

_I love you_ she wants to say, that and a thousand things, but Laura says she's not real and that's right, she's not, so she can't say those things, she has to say them to real-Laura when she sees her again, and maybe she won't see her again but maybe it's okay because maybe real-Laura knows. 

_I'm scared_ Laura says and she is too, because the stars are going and everything is going, she's scared but she's not sad because she's happy, she knows she did the right thing even though she doesn't know what she's done, but she doesn't want Laura to be sad because Laura should never be sad so she does the only thing she can while the stars blink away and everything goes away with them. 

_"Guten Abend, gut' Nacht, mit Rosen bedacht, mit Näglein besteckt, Schlüpf unter die Deck,'"_ she sings softly, and Laura smiles and that's right, she's not real, but maybe real-Laura is smiling too and that's a good thought. 

_"Morgen früh, wenn Gott will, Wirst du wieder geweckt...Morgen früh, wenn Gott will, Wirst du wieder geweckt..."_

And she sings and sings until she can't see Laura anymore, but it's okay she tells herself, because Laura's still there, she's not alone in the dark because she can't be, not again, she wouldn't survive it, and she sings and sings so there's some sound, any sound but it's so far away, everything is, and she's so tired, so hungry she can't feel it anymore, can't feel anything and maybe she can rest now. 

And then there's light, lights and noises, and she doesn't know what dying is but maybe this is it, maybe dying is shouting and hands pulling at her, and then there's blood in her mouth, and not-Laura is calling her, but she's not real, she's not real but she says she is, and not-Laura never lied about that, and she wants her to be real, she so wants her to be real. 

She opens her eyes. 

Laura is there. 

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I can give Carmilla a happy ending, if I'm terribly cruel to her first. 
> 
> A few notes: Countess Mircalla is Catholic. From the little research (read: googling) I did, that does seem to be the dominant religion in Austria in the time she would have been living.  
> The lullaby Carmilla sings is Brahm's Lullaby from about 1868. This is not from when she was human, obviously, and is just a few years before she was buried. I have a headcanon for how she learned it and may write it some time, but the I chose it for the last lyric, which translates to "Tomorrow morning, if God wills, you will wake once again."
> 
> All comments and criticism are welcomed with open arms!


End file.
